So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

One aspect of this normalization of photo uploading is that, if a platform allows user-generated content that can splash a modal to kids, a bad actor can do things like say “you need to re-verify or you’ll lose all your in-game currency, go here” and then collect photo identification without even needing to compromise identity verification providers!

I truly fear the harm that will be done before legislators realize what they’ve created. One only hopes that this prevents the EU and US from doing something similar.

Not especially feasible if you want to support businesses. More likely is trying to demand that VPNs also enforce age verification, which business-targeted VPNs might do, and then ban the ones that don't.

I’ve noticed that many people struggle to simply let things go. Take a hypothetical case where HN requires ID verification. I'd just stop using HN, even if that meant giving up checking tech news. Sometimes things end, and that's fine.

I used to watch good soccer matches on public TV. When services like DAZN appeared, only one major match was available each weekend on public TV. Later, none were free to watch unless you subscribed to a private channel. I didn't want to do that, so I stopped watching soccer. Now I only follow big tournaments like the World cup, which still air on public TV (once every 4 years).

Sometimes you just have to let things go

That makes sense. Golf has a minimum age of 35.

My main concern is that there isn't a reliable way to know your information is securely stored[0].

> A few years ago, I received a letter in the mail addressed to my then-toddler. It was from a company I had never heard of. Apparently, there had been a breach and some customer information had been stolen. They offered a year of credit monitoring and other services. I had to read through every single word in that barrage of text to find out that this was a subcontractor with the hospital where my kids were born. So my kid's information was stolen before he could talk. Interestingly, they didn't send any letter about his twin brother. I'm pretty sure his name was right there next to his brother's in the database.

> Here was a company that I had no interaction with, that I had never done business with, that somehow managed to lose our private information to criminals. That's the problem with online identity. If I upload my ID online for verification, it has to go through the wires. Once it reaches someone else's server, I can never get it back, and I have no control over what they do with it.

All those parties are copying and transferring your information, and it's only a matter of time before it leaks.

[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/your-id-online-and-offline